Contamination of veterinarian syringes designed for field use is a constant problem in the art, since such use is in environments where sources and opportunities for contamination are great. For example, in the dairy industry, mastitis in dairy cows is a constant problem and a conventional means of combating that problem is the injecting of a microbicide into the teats of the cows. This injection takes place in the dairy barn, which contains many sources and opportunities for contamination of the syringe used for the injection. That contamination may carry other bacteria and the use of such contaminated syringe may induce other unwanted conditions and diseases in the cows.
While many means of avoiding such contaminations are known, including protective devices such as containers, boxes, bags, and the like, these devices are not normally economical, since they entail considerable expense in both the protective devices themselves and the labor required to use those protective devices. For example, when a large number of cows must be inoculated, the opening and closing of protective devices is too time consuming.
Alternatively, a syringe may contain only the required injection for one teat, hence allowing disposing of that syringe to avoid contamination, but this is quite expensive in that cost of the syringes, per se. For this reason, multiple dose syringes, i.e., syringes containing at least four doses, are normally used.
It is to the multiple dose syringes that the present invention has particular relevancy. These syringes are of the type which have a cylindrical barrel, a piston movable in the barrel to discharge a measured dose of the contents and a discharge nozzle for dispensing the contents. The discharge nozzle is normally of the type which is detachable and disposable, since usually only one quarter of a lactating cow will be infected and since the nozzle used to inject one teat could contaminate another teat of the same or other cow which does not have mastitis.
Heretofore, these multiple dose syringes have been individually packaged. This is not only expensive but when the package is ruptured the syringe may be contaminated by the dairy barn environment. Alternatively, a plurality of these syringes have been contained in a single package to decrease the packaging cost per syringe, but here again, once the package is ruptured, all of the syringes may be contaminated by the dairy barn environment. As noted above, any protection against such contamination must be relatively inexpensive and the use thereof must not materially increase the time for injection of the cows, or otherwise that protection becomes prohibitively expensive, especially in view of the relatively small profit margin of the dairy farming industry.
Accordingly, it would be of significant advantage in the art to provide relatively inexpensive packages for multiple dose syringes which do not materially increase the cost of the packaged syringes and which do not materially increase the labor required for use of those syringes.